


Cast in the Shade

by chaletian



Category: Chalet School - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Genre: F/M, Family, Future Fic, Infidelity, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m probably quite wicked. I do see that. I’m not lost to all considerations of decency, even though people will say I am. And I know this isn’t the best way to go about things. It should be civil, organised, rational. Not like this, not running away in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cast in the Shade

Why does he call me Verity-Ann? I haven’t been called that in years: not since we became seniors at school and decided that it was childish. Just Verity-Ann, of course. Mary-Lou wasn’t childish. I remember her face when someone suggested she should make it just Mary! And yet I was to be Verity. I got used to it; you do. But he calls me by that name, when no-one else does.  
  
It’s a silly question to ask, though, because I know the answer. It’s because it’s a child’s name that he uses it. It makes me small. Not that I’ve ever needed much help with that, but I mean small in a different way. I cannot be trusted: I am too silly, too simple-minded. I must be cushioned and cosseted and controlled.  
  
I blame Mary-Lou. That’s a little harsh, perhaps. Maybe I blame her because deep down I know it’s my own fault: I let this happen to me. And who wants to accept that about herself? That I brought it on myself? No, I prefer to blame Mary-Lou.  
  
I don’t know when I first became known as a dreamer. I don’t know how it happened. It was so gradual, so slow, like a great glacier creeping down a mountain, until before you know where you are, it’s too late. Does that make sense? It’s funny, because I was never one for dreams. I have no imagination: I remember that Miss Linton told Dad that when I was about eleven. I was mildly offended, but knew it was true. I can’t help and, to be honest, I don’t really mind. Sometimes I think imagination can be a curse.  
  
But I didn’t dream. I wasn’t a dreamer. But somewhere, somehow, during my time at the Chalet School, it’s what I became. I don’t think anyone ever knew that it wasn’t dreams.  
  
It wasn’t anything.  
  
I should feel regret or anger that I spent so much of my youth in a grey daze of nothingness. But I can’t drum up that much passion. Resentment is as much as I can manage, and not the fiery, vengeful resentment, just a bad-tooth nagging resentment, grumbling away in the background.  
  
And this is why I blame Mary-Lou. Because until I met her, I was me. Insofar as you can at the age of ten, I knew myself. I knew what I thought, what I wanted, what I believed. Gradually, day by day, year after year, she took that away from me. And I let her.  
  
When Dad came back I was so happy: the happiest I think I have ever been in my life. Now I had the chance for a real, proper family, like everyone else. I loved my grandfather, but he was a busy man and, though he loved me too, he was not always comfortable around children. I sometimes saw other girls with their parents, and I envied them. But now was my chance for all that. And when, eventually, he and Doris decided to marry, I didn’t mind. In a way, I was glad. It was more family: I wouldn’t be an outsider in the Trelawney home any more, not the way I had been during the holidays. Mary-Lou and I would be sisters – we would share our parents, our families.  
  
It didn’t happen that way. Mary-Lou is… Mary-Lou. A rather circular description, I know, but if you’d met her, you’d understand. You can’t ignore her, you can’t subdue her. There’s just something about her that makes people pay attention – she can’t help it. I can’t blame her for that. And I don’t know why, not really, but she didn’t want a sister. Or rather, she didn’t want me as a sister. It’s hard to admit that. I admired her so much when we first knew each other. I really did. She is an admirable person. It’s hard to face up to the fact that she didn’t feel the same. She had friends: Vi, Lesley, Hilary… all that crowd. She even had a sister: Clem. I really was superfluous to requirements. An unnecessary adjunct to Dad.  
  
I don’t think she minded her mother marrying; I don’t think she minded have Dad as a father, not that he was there a great deal after the first couple of years. She got on really well with him.  
  
And, God help me, that’s why I hate her. I could tell, you see. I could tell that she was what Dad wanted in a daughter. He understood her. I don’t think he understood me. And after a while, I don’t think he even cared. They used to joke, he and Mary-Lou. About my first term, about how I refused to speak German out of lessons. What a silly thing I was! How stubborn. How foolish.  
  
Didn’t they realise how much I hated it when they did that? That when I was alone, I cried? Or maybe they just didn’t care. All right. It was stupid, I can see that now. But I was a child. I was ten years old and we had just come out of war against Germany, a war that, as far as I was concerned, had lasted most of my life. It’s all very well for people like Jo Maynard and Miss Annersley to see how wrong it was to believe in the Germans as monsters, but they were adults who had seen the reality of the situation. I was a child growing up in a small English village: what did they think I grew up hearing?  
  
But all that’s beside the point, now. It was a long time ago. Where was I? Ah yes: family life. Dad was in hospital so much, and so often ill when he was at home, that life continued much as it always had. The Trelawneys had their family. And I sat at their table: a stranger. I wasn’t like them. Not so much my… well, my step-mother. Yes, she was my step-mother. For some reason, though, I never referred to her as that, just as Mary-Lou never referred to Dad as her step-father. She called him Dad; we glossed over the nature of the relationship.   
  
I didn’t really call Mary-Lou’s mother anything. Mrs Carey was patently ridiculously, and it would never have occurred to any of us for me to call her Doris. And yet equally it did not occur to any of us for me to call her Mother, as Mary-Lou did. For eight years or so she was closest thing I had to a mother, and yet I never really spoke to her, not beyond the mundanities of asking what was for tea or whether we would be going shopping that afternoon. Holidays were a funny time. I try to think back to what I spent my time doing, and I can’t remember. Dad took us out sometimes, when he was fit enough, though those occasions dwindled quickly once we were about fourteen or so.  
  
He died when we were still at school. Everyone was very sorry, but I always felt they were more sorry for Mary-Lou, who bore the loss bravely. That’s probably wrong of me – I think even by then I resented her. She picked up after me, you see. All the time, as if I were a child who couldn’t possibly manage by myself. I think she had made her mind up about that when we were just kids – that I was a job for her. Her duty. Never mind the white man’s burden, I was Mary-Lou’s burden, and everyone said how well she managed with it. She’s a splendid organiser, of course, one has to give her that, and maybe I’m just bitter. But I still have no idea why she thought she had to organise me. Like I said, I wasn’t a dreamer. Not to begin with.  
  
I got lazy, I think. It was easier just to let Mary-Lou do what she wanted, and I knew she always did things with the best of intentions, that she was fond of me, even, in her own way. So I just went along with the current, and stopped thinking, really. Occasionally I might be the voice of dissent – or reason – and I was granted the dubious accolade of what I said having some sense, when I said anything at all. Maybe that was my trouble. I wasn’t assertive enough. I should have tried harder, dug my heels in. But I’d dug my heels in over German, and look where that had got me: on the wrong side of everyone, even Dad.   
  
You would think I would have been pleased to leave school, and in a way I was, but I had no idea what to do next, and suddenly the thought of not being told, of not knowing what would happen the next day, or the next, was terrifying. I had no plans for university. I had been bright enough at school, but I wasn’t an academic child by any means, not like Mary-Lou, who was off to Oxford, to read Archaeology. I stayed at home with my step-mother, and tried to help her as she slowly died. She had never been strong, though she held on for three years.  
  
I met Alan in the village about a year before she died. Mary-Lou was home for the holidays and had sent me on an errand for some bread and milk. I wasn’t paying much attention to anything, and he nearly ran me over. I apologised, and he told me off for not looking where I was going, and then he drove me home. He told Mary-Lou what had happened, and she had sighed, and then they both fussed over me until I went to bed. For the shock, of course.  
  
He’s twelve years older than me, Alan. He was a Science master at the big boys’ school not far from the village. He liked me, and kept calling. He seemed nice enough, and was always kind to me. Eventually he asked me to marry him, and I said yes.  
  
I don’t know quite why I said yes. I think I knew my step-mother was dying, that I would be alone soon and would have nothing to do. Marriage would certainly solve both those problems. So, apathy, I suppose. Mary-Lou thought it was terrific. She said it would be lovely for me to have Alan there, to look after me.  
  
I don’t know why Alan asked me. That is, I do, really. He wanted a wife, someone to come home to. Someone to have sex with at regularly appointed intervals, if you don’t mind my being too blunt. Someone who would just be there in the background, like a handy appliance. And I was obliging, and fairly pretty, and unlikely to ever cause any trouble. He’s never been cruel to me, not really. But he doesn’t love me, and he certainly doesn’t respect me. I don’t think he even likes me very much.  
  
I’m probably quite wicked. I do see that. I’m not lost to all considerations of decency, even though people will say I am. And I know this isn’t the best way to go about things. It should be civil, organised, rational. Not like this, not running away in the middle of the night.  
  
I met Mark six months ago, here in the village. He nearly knocked me over in his car, because I wasn’t paying any attention. He told me off about it, but then sat me down and bandaged my knee, and apologised, and said I looked too much like a china doll for anyone to hurt. I lost my temper, for the first time ever it felt, and told him it was hardly complimentary to tell a twenty-nine year old woman that she looked like a doll. He was rather taken-aback, I think. I saw him several times after that, and we usually fought, about nothing in particular. Then, a month ago, I met him up beyond Mill Lane, where young James Tyler’s farm ends, and we got caught in the rain. We ran for the old barn there, and it was so like one of our godforsaken school expeditions that I found myself telling Mark all about, and then about other things too, and then… Well, quite.  
  
He’s woken me up. Dreadful, I know, that it should take another person to make me pull myself together, but then I’ve always been hopeless. Except no, I haven’t. I need to stop thinking like that. I need to make a life for myself. So I’m running away with him. He didn’t want it to be like that – I think it hurts his sense of honour to run off with another man’s wife. But this is how I want it, and for once, I’m making sure I get what I want. I don’t expect always to, don’t misunderstand me. One mustn’t be selfish, after all. But aren’t I entitled to a little happiness, even at the expense of someone else? And Alan won’t care, truly he won’t. It will hurt his pride, that’s all. It will be as if he’s lost something, something valuable that people will notice is lost, but nothing more than that.  
  
I don’t know if I will ever talk to Mary-Lou again. She won’t approve, of course, but she won’t cut me. She hasn’t been brought up like that. And I am, after all her duty. But I don’t give two hoots for that, because I can manage by myself, and I don’t need her. I feel like shouting it, like telegramming the school, like taking out an advertisement in the Times. I do not need Mary-Lou Trelawney. I am my own woman


End file.
